One of the most fun things about using a Micro 4/3 camera is the fact that you can attach old/ vintage lenses to it via an adapter. The adapter will vary depending on the kind of mount that the adapted lens has so be sure to know what mount the vintage lens has before buying it. You should factor in the price of the adapter and its availability before making the purchase of the lens.

Although I will agree that a micro 4/3 might not be the perfect system on which to mount your legacy lenses due to the 2x crop factor (a 50mm lens will yield a 100mm filed of view equivalent on 35mm standard, a 28mm vintage lens will effectively offer a 56mm field of view, etc) you can still have a lot of fun with old lenses and your Olympus micro 4/3 camera.

Why is focus peaking important?

Vintage lenses were not designed for digital cameras and as such they will not yield as sharper results as a native modern digital lens. As such you will want to achieve the best focus you can of your subject so that you will enjoy as sharp as possible results from your legacy lens. Nobody really likes out of focus pictures unless that’s what you’re going for in your artistic interpretation.

How to use the focus peaking Hack on your Olympus Micro 4/3 camera even though focus peaking is not a featured option?

Here’s another video to further illustrate how to set up focus peaking on your Olympus camera by using Art Filter 11 – Key Line.

Even though your Olympus micro 4/3 does not have Focus Peaking feature directly in its menus, there is quite a nifty trick by which you can achieve focus peaking by using one of the art filters which you probably though was the most useless of them all.

1. Go to Menu 1, set Picture mode to Art Filter 11, set Type to II
2. Go to Reset/Myset, choose Myset1, then Set
3. Change back to your normal shooting mode… (P, A, S, M)
4. Go to Settings > Button Dial > Button Function. Set Fn1 function to Myset1
5. Try it out. When you need to focus peak, just hold the Fn1 button and focus. Release to return to normal mode, then shoot.Finally, a usable focus peaking in any Olympus PEN and OMD.

Too know you have achieved focus by the bold dark lines around your subject.

I don’t use vintage lenses nor do I plan to use them in the future, how does this help me?

If old adapted lenses aren’t your thing I’m sure you do enjoy the occasional macro photography session. If you shoot macro you know that the best way to do macro shots is to manual focus in order to obtain that critical focus. Using this focus peaking technique will save you a lot of time and make your macro photography even more fun because will now manage to grab perfect focus of your macro subjects.

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